Left for dead, she’s a guiding light

She may have died, but some stars live forever. Well worth going over her last messages to the world. Let’s listen to her.

True, this 23-year-old cannot be left unidentified. Just a week after she was brutalised by men out to have ‘fun’, she lost forever her ability to eat and would have to be fed intravenously the rest of her life if she managed to defeat the multiple infections and live. Despite her physical destruction, this woman shone from her ICU bed, a gentle star in a dark sky. She taught me tremendous lessons and it was difficult to not name her.

I want to call her Tara – my guiding light, a shining star.

From the ICU bed, Tara reached out and gave important messages: what did she tell us as she struggled against all odds to live? She was happy her attackers were arrested, she wanted her ATM cards blocked, she didn’t want too manyto know about her case. And she wanted to move on.

Don’t want to talk about it. Can I read that as the beginning of a self-healing process? Move on. Do not relive it. Do not let it define you.

Girl, you and your friend who was also attacked are heroes

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She wanted her cards blocked. And her case must not be shared with too many people. Her instinct for self-preservation kicked in. That is the strength of an immeasurable will. Surely, as a hurting wounded child, you’d scream and shout and tell the world you’re hurting real and awful. At 23, she had the maturity to know that one important instrument to her being able to move on, is to be able to contain the spread of the news in her immediate world. Punishment? Yes. Follow the case to its completion? Yes. Drama? NO. She lay in the ICU, her mind crystal clear.

Don’t allow loose talk: Especially of the kind that our women politicians are lapsing into. Sheila Dikshit’s complete absence of any sense of responsibility was as morally reprehensible as the goons’ attack. As was Sushma Swaraj’s generic ‘zinda lash’ (Aruna Shanbaug madam?). Every time Dikshit bleats her ‘helpless’ status, she empowers rapists. Every time she hides behind the Centre’s khaki to say ‘mein kya karun’ she promises criminal immunity.

She questioned what Soumya Viswanathan was doing driving alone at night when she was killed by shots fired from another car. She is completely from the school of thought that relentlessly question what you’re wearing and where you’re going. She has no place in today’s society. We need zero tolerance for such loose talk. She reveals her lack of culture at such moments. Tara is right. Don’t let the politicians open their trap unless t is to inform us how they plan to secure the city: for women, the elderly, our children (schools unsafe for kids?) and the men too (don’t forget the spike in road rage murders). In this, the Dikshits of the world make you want to throw up.

And Tara wanted to move on. This is not romanticising her horrible attack. She wanted to live. Doctors marvelled at this girl’s will. This is her greatest lesson to society. We must heed Tara’s message. Her life force ebbed out, her fight doesn’t. God knows it is a fight to Move On. Easier said than done. A young woman demonstrated Move On. Grit. Love for life. Sheer soul. A woman for whom this was as life-defining a moment — in a terrible way — as it can be.

Men, and women such as Delhi and West Bengal’s chief ministers, think differently. They tend to believe women are scarred forever. They often are, because bringing the attackers to justice is such a ritualised, soul-sapping, and often futile exercise. We only need to read the gut-curdling account of the police’s questioning the gangrape victim in Punjab. The police led her to commit suicide. The gangrape she would have survived.

A woman can very well move on, given the correct kind of support that includes from the family, legal punishment to attackers and rational gender-blind approach by these institutions: family, hospital, courts, police, media, especially schools given how unsafe schools seem to have become. Lofty? No, only ideal.

Listen to Tara. She said don’t even allow the most brutalised attack ever to cower you. Get them punished. And move on.

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Delhi had a cathartic fortnight. We poured out on the streets in a deluge, letting our bottled up cocktail of disgust, fear, anger and angst spill like blood. Result? We know, at least we presume we will have some impact, that the brutal rapists will be punished harshly. Zero tolerance for rape, of course, is a silly concept in our country given that marital rape is not as such a crime. Let’s start with zero tolerance of sexual harassment: that Incredible India term eve-teasing. The sweeping sadness over the incident, the helplessness turned to outrage is as much over the brutality of the physical attack that left her for dead as it was about the sexual assault.

The city is baying for blood. Yet, from what we’ve learnt of the 23-year-old so far makes me feel Tara would seek punishment, not revenge. I wanted to rip apart those goons in as barbaric a way as possible, not wait for any ‘system’ to kick in no matter how insane I know such a thought is. This is an ordinary reaction. Tara is anything but.

Tara has the wherewithal to emerge unscathed, unscarred from the multiple sexual attacks. No-one could be expected to survive the level of brutality. Physically destroyed, mentally fortified, emotionally and spiritually: God-gifted.

Tara has left me humbled yet with hope. We prayed — for I think our own peace of mind and for the strength we get from her — that she stay alive. But we knew equally well that if she did, it would be an extremely difficult journey. Tara, know now that you live forever. You’re in a different league. You’re God’s special child. And we will do well to identify you as our guiding star.

Just one last request since we are pinning so much hope on you. They’ll say “may your soul rest in peace”. Don’t do that Tara. You’ve started something that must not end. Haunt us. Haunt us till you’re satisfied that you can now rest. And all the women will recognise that moment when it happens.